More from the New York Cider Association and Raise A Glass Foundation Awards…

Kite & String’s 17 case run of Goldrush 2017 gets double gold…

And on our shelves now!

We weren’t sure… as referenced in our last vintage report (HERE), a pin in time is useful and reminds us of all the bus stops along the way. The 2017 Goldrush took a bit to calm down, and during that time we blended a bit of the SV tank into other blends. But then, after a champagne method secondary fermentation and a nice long rest… Wowza. This cider is exquiste. It references the intention of the farm, and brings back the late fall days of 2017- which admittedly warmer than 2018! So now, we’re sure and so were the judges this year.

Due to limited production, this cider is not on the Tasting Menu and is only available for purchase in the Tasting Room or on our Online Store.

I write to let you know that today begins my transition away from Good Life Farm - Kite & String Cider - Finger Lakes Cider House. There are many details to wrap up, but today marks the moment.

Regenerative agriculture is a powerful tool for clean air, clean water and right livelihood. With that in mind I’ve sunk my roots into the farm for the past 11 years. My blood, sweat, tears, and all my ideals are part of the soil of this place. Leaving has not come easily but for myself and for the trifecta of these businesses, it is time I seek other opportunities to explore and contribute.

The farm and cidery and Cider House continue to be what they are- places for gathering and testing the realities of farming ideals. I look forward to what evolves next at this special home on Hickok Road. Your love for the Cider House and Good Life Farm are also and always appreciated, and I invite you to continue to visit and partake.

May 1, 2019

By Melissa Madden

2018 was a challenging year to fully ripen fruit. This has a significant impact on the quality of the vintage and deep repercussions for cellar practices starting with harvest thru to each cider’s release date. Usually we look back at vintages from the fully finished and aged standpoint. We are just beginning to release the first of the 2018 ciders, while the rest are laid down for secondary fermentation and aging. I find it to be a fine moment to lay out some Harvest ‘18 vintage details before we forget in the haste of Spring 2019 and all that is to come!

Starting in August 2018 we had torrential, record-producing rains (see our Blog post 8/23/18 about the floods on Seneca and Cayuga Lakes), and a consistent state of lower-than-average temperatures for much of the late Fall. 2018 was indeed the wettest autumn since 1895, with the fourth warmest September and third coldest November on record (NOAA Quarterly Climate Impact and Outlook, December 2018). I’m using weather data, brix at harvest and specific gravity at press, and my own memories of field harvest to draw some preliminary conclusions on the 2018 Vintage.

VOCAB MOMENT

Brix (fruit sugars)

Specific Gravity (density of a liquid aka sugar content, in this case fresh pressed apple juice. SG is used to follow fermentations to dryness)

Each vintage we have an opportunity to express the fruit and the farming practices behind each harvest. Each vintage offers its own set of trials, and it is tempting to seek the year that was the BEST. I prefer instead to focus on what the vintage tells us about its own year, and explore how we tie our own story to that time.

I asked Jimmy to characterize his own experience from last Fall and to discuss his vantage at the press vs mine in the field. Jimmy reported a few facts that corroborated my memories about harvest, and used the variety ‘Goldrush’ to tell his story. He uses this particular and beloved variety because we use more of it than any other variety. Over the past three years, we’ve done Good Life Farm-estate only single varietal ferments with ‘Goldrush’, largely destined for the Cider Club. The 2017 SV was so limited it is only for sale (17 cases in total) that it is for sale but not on the tasting menu. It is spectacular, and since we both buy and source ‘Goldrush’, and value it so highly, it is an exceptional window into our experience of a vintage.

The 2018 ‘Goldrush’ coming out of Good Life Farm were harvested in a shorter window than in 2015 and 2017 (2016 being so extreme in terms of drought that data is scant and irrelevant), except for some early drops during a heat wave in September. We started picking earlier and had to finish earlier because the snow and ice arrived on November 16th, but the ripeness as represented by brix at harvest and specific gravity after pressing were lower compared to those years where harvest went on into December. As compared to other farms where we also source ‘Goldrush’, we had higher specific gravity- I’ll guess because of a mix of our orchard practices- organic, lower input, no irrigation, low Nitrogen inputs- and because we were able to spot harvest and visit trees several times to attempt to allow for greater ripeness.

What does this suggest for the 2018 vintage? I may be stretching a bit by trying to use specific varieties as a metric and for not manically keeping weather data collated by variety at the time of harvest. But from here, I’d sum up the 2018 vintage as this…

2018 was a tough year in ways unrelated to weather, and I think that the simple challenge of getting the harvest in is well documented in the subsequent challenge of getting the fruit to shine in the cider. Jimmy pointed out that several of our new experiments- First Pet Nat! First wild ferments with Good Life ‘Goldrush’! … represent a nod towards slightly more risky cellar practices with greater rewards. This might be a great way to sum up the challenges of 2018 generally. Because of our September heat wave and resulting early fruit drop, we spent a lot of time revisiting trees to spot pick what was left with hopes of increased ripeness. Similarly, in the cellar, Jimmy and Garrett spent a lot of time working around this weird harvest timing and low sugars, while all of us stood at the press far into the freezing temperatures of Fall. Over the next 9 months the 2018 vintage will arrive to tell its own story, and we’ll see how poignant this particular pin in time proves.

Brief Insights in the the life of the Farm-Cidery-Cider House, at this moment

Kite & String Cellar Update

Above, you see Rick heroically posing during our Funkhouse filtration. We’re filtering to build cuvees for our final bottling of champagne method ciders- sending nearly 4,500 gallons into secondary fermentation between March 13 and April 19. We won’t see those ciders again until we disgorge starting in the summer and fall. These ciders are only a part of our K&S catalog, but represent the most labor- and time- intensive blends.

Soon to be released are beloved Rose and newly re-visioned Baldwin (sparkling, dry with that strange sense of unfermentable sugar). Starting with the May Cider Club, we’ll have a limited release Pet Nat called ‘Greenman’- an ode to our designer Q Cassetti and FLX orchard advocate Peter Hoover.

For once, this year Jimmy may see some daylight in the Spring. He and Garrett reworked the cidery schedule to push bottling earlier and get Jimmy out during our crazy crunch time in May.

Coming soon… thoughts on how the 2018 vintage has shaped up. We’ve almost got a read on that!

Cider House happenings

Busy times! This part of our business has yet to cease with surprises. As farmers, Garrett and I knew about to long days and big goals. The work of the Tasting Room has been to meld the labor of farming with the delicacy of service.

One way we celebrate this is daily- you come visit and we do our thing. Another way is more seasonally driven… for example! Coming up on Friday, April 5 we’ll have our annual cheese+cider collaboration dinner featuring Lively Run Dairy, our K&S cider and a menu to inspire from The Cheese Course (Rachel Freier and Laura Sutter).

Asparaganza is Saturday, May 26th, a cap off to the “slower” season and a welcome to the summer chaos.

We’ll be here, the releases will come out and we’ll serve ‘em. We’d love to have you and your family for lunch, brunch, tastings and flights, as ever.

Good Life Farm, progress

Presprouting, pruning, prepping, praying

It’s time! Our first control sprays go on the peaches- in that ever present battle for dominance over the moisture-soaked NE paradigm of fungal diseases. Last year, dark and wet as the fall was, we had a glorious peach crop and we’re planning to open it to UPick again. It starts now.

Also in the good news pile- we’ve scaled back up on the ginger side. We’ve got 400# of ginger mothers presprouting in a warm, dark cabinet. They’re destined for high tunnel planting sometime in May and for all kinds of ginger-based goodness by late fall.

It looks to be a year for focus on the perennials and some specialty veg. We’re adding strawberries for 2020 UPick, cleaning up past mistakes (see below) and preparing for that turn into our 11 year. Here, we can outgrow our worn out assumptions and take the farm into a healthy adolescence. Wish us luck, and come to the harvest when it comes!

Welcome Hannah, Stephanie and Rick!

Two Tasting Room Managers and our Production Assistant are on board

Over the past week, we’ve got a new team forming. All three of our new staff represent restructuring for 2019 and our excitement for the future. When we tell the story of our farm-cidery-tasting room, it often revolves around the slow burn from 2008-2014 when we lived off-grid on 300W of power, farmed with the horses and worked on a long arc relying on trees that only bear in year 10 or 15. Between 2013-2015 we started both the Kite & String Cidery (née Good Life Cider) and the Finger Lakes Cider House. In that time we went from farming to farming, cider making, hospitality and our tiny cafe. It took us from 1.5 employees to up to 20 in our busiest season. Garrett and I have been rapidly adjusting in order to keep our eyes on that long arc and our primary values. We are grateful to have our current loyal team and to welcome new members to help us manage the opportunities we’ve created and are blessed by.

Hannah and Stephanie will be sharing management of the Tasting Room, with Michelle here to guide them through the transition. Both Hannah and Stephanie have additional duties intended to help us grow our ability to do private events, high brow private tastings, paired lunches and priortize our growing Cider Club. They come to us with significant experience and commitment to the Finger Lakes wine scene and we’re honored to have them aboard. Over the next few weeks you’ll find each of them on the Tasting Room floor any day of the week. Please help us welcome them!

Rick has joined us to support that funny combination of cidery and farm. Each year we find ourselves stretching to meet the needs of each, and often the busy times for both overlap. We hired Rick with great excitement because of his background in land management. We’re excited to have further support from an inspired team to keep our vintages top notch and our trees better cared for. You’ll see Rick out and about, and please say hello!

Reminder! We are still hiring for the Tasting Room, weekends especially.

On Saturday, February 23rd, 2019, my two closest farming partners, Leo and Polly (Percheron team) left for a new life. I cried when they left, but I knew it was the right thing; I was lagging in my craft, and I wasn’t giving them the work they needed. I will miss them with every hour.

I met Leo and Polly’s new owner, Keith Marquis, only a few weeks ago, but have known of him since I first worked at Cayuga Pure Organics, 13 years ago. Erik Smith, one of my most important farming mentors, leased land from Keith’s father, Kermit, who raised and farmed with Belgians. That farm is long in new hands, but Keith is starting over with a horse powered dairy. He knows horses, and he has a fine pair that will work alongside Leo and Polly. As sad as I am to see them go, I am relieved to see them in such good hands, and I am moved and grateful for the enduring care of one farmer for another.

I want to know that small farms are just this. We help each other as we can, with not a string attached. We see each other’s efforts, and we are joyous in successes and forgiving in failures, knowing first hand how unpredictable farming can be. We help each other, sometimes reaching across decades. I am grateful to feel this hope and support from the farming world, despite, or maybe because of, my current sense of loss.

And there is more good news: Leo and Polly will be back for Asparaganza in late May, and if luck is with me, perhaps I’ll take their lines again.

Musings from the Farm, the Cidery, the Tasting Room

Greetings upon the return of the light!

The Cross Quarter is approaching, when the balance of light shifts back toward a warming balance. On a farm, especially one like ours, which grows in high tunnels for vegetable season extension, the Winter Cross Quarter (this year on Feb 2, 2019) is something you can feel. I’d invite you all to check out a greenhouse- somewhere, here perhaps?- on a sunny day. I know forest bathing has found a footing in social media… I’m considering a whole new endeavor in season extension bathing. Winter salad production bathing?

So we celebrate that slow build towards spring! When you hear from me in May, it’ll be amid the mad rush of tasks and hopes and plans and the best chance to make the most of the 2019 growing season (if that chance wasn’t 10 years ago). Perhaps this is another thing I so enjoy about the Winter Cross Quarter… the intensity outside increases, but there is still ample time to relax. And write to you, and test and blend the previous vintage.

Thank you for joining and sustaining our Club. I adore having direct communication with people who eat and drink what we make. I value deeply that you choose our farm and cidery, and seek to share with you the trials and joys of each season through the Club selections as made by myself, Garrett and Jimmy. Please let me know if there is more you want to know about the farm, the cidery, or the tasting room. We are here to learn from you.

CHANGE AT GOOD LIFE FARM

We are in the midst of large changes in our farm. Garrett and I started this project just over 10 years ago, and it is in adolescent stages with all the flux that entails. If you follow the newsletters or social media, you will know that I’m moving my draft team- Leo and Polly- along to a new farm (find more updates on that at thegoodlifefarm.org/blog).

Good Life farm was a bare field at first, where we mixed tree planting with annual vegetables and much wide open field mowing. Now, Good Life Farm is largely covered in 10 year old trees, and the tillage has ended and the mowing style shifted to between trees and in narrow alleyways. Leo and Polly don’t have quite enough work, and I do not have enough time to train them for pleasure, as I desire to do. I have had a loving ton of inquiry about them, and we are well on our way to an excellent new farm for them. I am partially on my way towards accepting this important change but in the spirit of true sustainability, I am glad to do what is best for my farm, team and myself. We all need something slightly different.

I think the transition for me, Leo, and Polly, is indicative of the stage our farm and cidery growth are at in general. It is a useful symbol. When Garrett and I started the farm in 2008, we were strict and intense about how to apply permaculture on our farm. As we’ve morphed towards the regenerative agriculture movement, we’ve realized some of the mistakes of our youth-driven maniacal focus, and have started a redesign of some of our plantings and our ways of operating. It’s a big transition, but I feel that it is timely. 2019 looks to be a big year of transition.

RESTING IN KITE & STRING CIDERY

Jimmy, Garrett and I finished our final pressing on Nov 29. 2018 amid snow and sleet. We had learned to operate our new press over the course of the 2018 vintage, and in our final pressing we set a record. In 2 days we pressed 3,000 gallons in an absolute marathon set of workdays. Now the 2018 vintage is happily finishing primary fermentation, and resting in the cool to deepen. Some of the 2018 ciders we only made in small quantities: ‘King of Hector’ is only 70 gallons from my wild harvesting efforts- and we will experiment with these as a hobby cider maker might. We will continue to create the K&S ciders that you know and love well, like, ‘Northern Spy’ and ‘Rosè’ for that patio pounding moment. Garrett and Jimmy continue to finesse our champagne method ciders like ‘Cazenovia’ and ‘Geneva Russet’ for those refined moments, and we’re just into Ice Cider season with these seriously freezing temperatures rotating with some thaw. The cidery is in its most restful phase, but blending comes soon! And with it more info on the truth of the 2018 harvest.

GROWTH AT THE CIDER HOUSE

Most of you likely have visited by now, and we hope you always feel welcome at the Finger Lakes Cider House. This aspect of our business continues to blow our farmer minds- by adding a full lunch and brunch menu these past 6 months we’ve expanded what our farm can do for the Tasting Room and what you can do here! In an ever adjusting journey, we’re seeking a to offer a cozy space with a full emphasis on quality without pretension and a clear focus on the story of upstate New York sustainable agriculture. We have started our search for a new Tasting Room Manager and are starting to hire for regular tasting staff as well. If you know of someone up for the challenge of the farm to cidery to tasting room and cafe storytelling job, send ‘em our way! If you want that story told to you at any time, please come by. As a reminder, you will always get 20% off all cider purchased in the Tasting Room- including the cider you drink here.

Here’s to you and here’s to our connection to your dining room table, your parties and your palate. We want to know what you think and we seek to grow in response.

Cider Maker Notes: Made with the highest proportion of bittersweet apples of all our ciders. Fermented cold and slow before ageing and bottling for secondary fermentation. Disgorged at 6 months, then dosaged with our traditional ice cider to enhance the fruit aromas while offering a subtle, almost unnoticeable sweetness.

Inspiration: This year, we blended the bittersweets down a bit with small bits of a cacophony of Good Life apples to increase acidity just a bit. The result is a super fruit forward tannic cider! New cameo in this long standing blend (we’ve been making Cazenovia since 2013) is ‘Kingston Black’.

Production: 210 cases

Pairing Suggestions: This particular blend makes it a more delicate pairing than past ‘Caz’ vintages- we recommend this one standing alone a fabulous Welcome for any special dinner or for a toast. Locally we have a cheese called ‘Rose’s Reserve’- a nutty alpine style that pairs beautifully!

Cider Maker Notes: The timing for the 2017 Geneva Russet was unique in that we had the Russets early, and partially through fermenting the russet juice we added bittersweets, which expanded and slowed the whole process.

Inspiration: We wanted to make a Russet-dominated cider to express the uniquely low acid character and complex flavor of these apples. Traditional Method is our preferred technique for our dry ciders- to create more complex aromas and- in the case of Geneva Russet- the creaminess of the second fermentation and slight dosage gives the mouthfeel some weight.

Production: 210 cases

Pairing Suggestions: We tried this with a variety of herbs and spices and determined that the best pairing is floral but can be savory or sweet. Think anise, lavender, cacao. On the fully savory side, smoked gouda is always a winner.

Traditional Ice Cider 2017

Cider Maker Notes: Fermented in deep winter after a long process of cryo-extraction through December and January. After removing enough ice/water we achieved a starting juice of 39 brix. Not only do we concentrate sugars, but we also concentrate the acidity. The Total Acidity is the highest we’ve ever seen, which we’re glad to have as a balance to the sweetness of this dessert cider. We stopped fermentation by cold crashing at 19 brix and 12% ABV. We then aged this blend at 37 degrees F for six months in stainless before filtering and bottling in the fall.

Inspiration: Ice Cider is almost obvious to make in our climate… and as we’ve learned from our mentors, it captures the truth of the harvest. In this Ice Cider, we focused on NYS-bred varieties and used the cold of our season to make something terroir-driven, all the way home.

Production: 92 cases

Pairing Suggestions: Make this the centerpiece of dessert! Pair with grapefruit or lemon curd, blue cheese, cheddar and soft bread, dark chocolate and fresh orange wedges.